Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs

Chapter 930: Meeting Patt: Shameless Elevator Negotiation

Then I looked down at Rory.

She had migrated, in the last ninety seconds, approximately three inches deeper into my shoulder. I genuinely didn’t know how. I hadn’t felt her move. She was just more on me now, occupying more real estate, utterly unbothered, sleeping with the confidence of someone who had decided this shoulder was hers and was not entertaining counterarguments.

Kids were genuinely a different species.

Different operating system entirely. While I was standing here running approximately forty-seven mental tabs — security grid, ARIA’s drone coordinates, Eziel’s financial timeline, whether Rory’s breathing rhythm was normal — this child had achieved complete and total peace by simply opting out.

Respect. I’m not even being sarcastic. That’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever witnessed.

The elevator opened and I stepped in.

Three men in suits that screamed I made money recently and want credit for it —just expensive enough to look like they were trying, like a discount Christian Bale doing his best Patrick Bateman impression without fully committing to the bit.

And two women who had the polished, slightly post-dinner-meeting energy of people processing a professional evening and not quite ready to turn off yet.

All five of them hit me with the double-take simultaneously.

It was — and I say this with complete objectivity — cinematic. Five heads swiveling in the exact same half-second like I’d pressed a button. The kind of synchronized reaction that usually required choreography.

The men’s faces went through: me → Rory → me →processing error please wait.

The women’s faces went through something considerably more complicated and considerably more flattering. One of them — dark blazer, killer posture, the energy of a woman who had made a lot of decisions very confidently — did the thing where she bit her lip without realizing she was doing it.

Just ran the biological math involuntarily. Her brain saw tall, disproportionately attractive, holding sleeping child and short-circuited the polite filters on its way to the honest response.

I didn’t blame her. That was just evolution doing its job. The human female brain had a very specific algorithm for this exact input and it had been running for two hundred thousand years without an opt-out option.

Then I recognized one of them.

The lawyer who’d walked into the Dex Entertainment negotiation room for negotiation. Mid-thirties. Sharp enough to cut yourself on accidentally. Power suit. Hair perfect.

She was giving courtroom-to-cocktail-hour energy and honestly? It worked.

"Patt," I said, with the smile that ARIA had once described as statistically inadvisable in enclosed spaces. "Fancy meeting you here."

Patt blinked. Her professionalism recalibrated in about a second — you could almost see it happen, the professional mask sliding back into place — and then her eyes dropped to Rory, and then something went sideways in her expression in the best possible way.

An actual smile.

"I didn’t know we were staying at the same hotel." Her eyes stayed on Rory a beat longer than strictly necessary. "Though I’m more surprised to see a teenager like you with a daughter this age."

"Proud father," I said, gently adjusting Rory’s position. "Though I’m new to this whole thing and honestly have no idea how to handle her tonight. Girls’ night out left me alone with my beautiful little gremlin. And I have been patting her back for forty-five minutes and I will be doing that until further notice."

Patt laughed. The real version. Surprised out of her, which meant I’d gotten past the professional firewall on the first try, which I was choosing to take as a compliment.

The three suit men were no longer pretending to look elsewhere. They had fully, openly committed to witnessing whatever this was. Discount Patrick Bateman on the left had basically stopped blinking.

The other woman in the elevator had put her phone away with the focus of someone who’d decided live entertainment was more valuable.

"You have a very unique way of asking for help," Patt said, her voice carrying that dry precision of someone who parsed subtext professionally and had spotted mine from three sentences back.

I arranged my face into an expression of total, complete, absolute innocence.

"Did it sound like that?" I feigned innocence.

"It sounded exactly like that." She tilted her head slightly, evaluating me the way you evaluate a contract clause that seems too clean. "It sounded like a conventionally attractive man like you inviting me to help you with your daughter."

"I’m usually shy about being so straightforward," I replied. "Good thing I didn’t have to be straight about it." I paused, letting that double meaning hang in the air for a second. "But if you don’t mind..."

Patt shrugged, but I could see the interest in her eyes. "I’m good with kids. But I’m no saint either, so what’s in it for me?"

I thought for a moment, then smiled. "Whatever you want. I’ll do anything for my daughter’s ultimate peace. So... anything you want."

"Blank check?" Patt asked, raising an eyebrow.

I nodded. "Blank check it is."

The three men were staring at us like they were watching a porno shoot negotiations in real-time. The other woman looked scandalized and intrigued in equal measure.

Pretty sure everyone in this elevator knew exactly what two horny perverts were planning to do once the kid was asleep.

And Patt was being absolutely shameless about it.

Patt, for the record, did not look even slightly embarrassed. She had the energy of a woman who had made peace with her desires approximately a decade ago and had not looked back since. There was something genuinely impressive about that.

The way she held it — visible, organized, completely unapologetic. Like she’d filed it properly and wasn’t interested in revisiting the paperwork.

It’s giving I’m an adult who knows what I want and I’m not performing uncertainty for anyone’s comfort. Slay, honestly. Absolutely unhinged. Completely valid.

DING!

The elevator reached the men’s floor. They stepped out, glancing back one more time with expressions that said they’d be thinking about this conversation for days.

A few floors later, the other woman got out, shooting Patt a look that was half judgment, half admiration.

DING!

My floor.

"Shall we?" I asked, gesturing for Patt to follow.

She stepped out of the elevator with me, her heels clicking against the marble floor. "Lead the way, proud father. Let’s see if you’re as good at handling bedtime as you are at negotiating contracts."

"Oh, I’m much better at handling other things," I replied, shifting Rory gently. "But first, let’s get this little one settled."

Patt’s smile was pure sin. "And then?"

"And then," I said, unlocking the suite door, "we’ll see about that blank check."